


where is the treasure inside of your chest?

by onlyeli



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Derse/Prospit Royalty, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Bittersweet Ending, Derse and Prospit, Goodbyes, M/M, Royalty, Running Away, but bro it took me MONTHS to write this one, dirk is gayyyyyyy, i know there SHOULD be a second chapter to this, i mean..., im not promising anything but like (:, so is jake but like covert, update: there is now a second chapter bc i am predictable and weak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-01-13 09:24:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21241832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlyeli/pseuds/onlyeli
Summary: You turn to stare at him for a long moment, no longer blinded by his golden glow. It's dim in the dusk, flickering over his shoulders and between each finger like he's an oil lamp simmering out.‘I wrote to you,’ you say, voice carefully empty. If he notices, it doesn't show. ‘Lost three carriers to the wilds because I was too stubborn and stupid to stop sending you letters.’or: dirk is to be king. jake never cared much for the court.





	1. I

Derse was once nought but an army rallied around a flag, soaked in mud and spirit. They had followed whichever soldier had screamed the loudest, whoever had killed the most. The kingdom built itself on foundations of steel and bone, surrounding warriors who never learned how to settle and died with their swords at their sides. Now, looking over the crowds you are supposed to be greeting, you don’t think much has changed.

You are Dirk Strider, the First of His Name, Master of Heart and Soul, Silver-Banded Swordsman, Crown Prince of Derse. You realise this is a mouthful, and beseech most of your court to call you Dirk. It doesn’t often stick. Tonight, on the fourth day following your father’s death, you are to be named king. Your kingdom, most of whom are milling through Prospitans, Alternians and Beforans alike in your ballroom, seem far more excited than you are. 

In truth, you are bored and sore. Dersite furniture will never be famed for its comfortable nature - it has taken you the better part of fifteen minutes to make yourself comfortable on your new throne, slumped low against the backrest with your chin on your palm. Your advisor, Hal, stands at your side, with his thin hands folded across his abdomen. He’s careful to keep his face empty as you turn to him.

‘How much longer until it begins?’ You ask. Your voice is low and laced with silver, only tinged by the thick accent that sprouts like mould in Derse’s darkest corners, of which there are an abundance. Many years of tutors and coaches have trained you to speak well (which, to your chagrin, often means ‘like a Prospitan’, but you digress), though you won’t see your own natural eloquence disregarded. 

Hal, with a far-off expression, examines your brother, who is kicking up some kind of a fuss with Prospit’s Heir of Wind and Breath. Looking at them taps at a raw little nerve behind your eyes. 

‘Soon,’ he says, ‘but not until you have made yourself acquainted with your guests. Both Peixes are in attendance tonight, Your Majesty. It would do you well to speak with them. Were you not always fond of their eldest in your youth?’

It’s true that you and Meenah had gotten along better than most on the odd occasion you’d been allowed to play together -- Derse and the Troll Kingdoms didn’t oft unite for anything outside of battle, but her visits were usually pleasant affairs. Even so, she hadn’t been your favourite childhood friend, nor you hers, and it had been fairly obvious. Regardless, you would be naive to misunderstand what Hal is actually telling you. 

‘Would it not also do me well to speak with Jane, then? While I’m at it, why not extend an invitation to the Felt Emperor and see if he can make it?’ 

Hal’s lip curls. ‘Whether you like it or not, we will see you wed, Your Majesty. For the good of your kingdom. Your life is--’

‘Derse’s before it is my own,’ you finish, dutifully, but determinedly. You will not give him the satisfaction of thinking you’d forgotten. As much as you defy tradition, for Derse, you will be anything. Marriage to a noble is a tiny sacrifice. 

Your conversation ends there. 

You decide to stay seated. Hal gets visibly more irritated with each minute that passes. 

Good.

You’re just counting the end of the thirteenth minute when the large double doors across the hall swing open, chased inwards by a breeze a little too warm to feel familiar. Your subjects and their company seem nonplussed, but you are more accustomed to the cold bite of the sea wind than most and take note, straightening up and peering at the darkness just beyond the doorway. 

Dismounting a white mare is a boy dressed all in gold. Despite the hot air, you freeze.

His hair has grown, falling about his ears in handsome little ringlets, windswept and unruly. The shadows part before him under your instruction, giving him a path to follow through the room and into the whispering candlelight, where he radiates something tangible and sturdy. It’s as polished as each yellow button fastened along his tunic, though the top two are undone to free his neck. You get the impression his dress shirt is not one he dons often and feels stiff as a result. 

The time you spend distracted by his throat is only time you aren’t looking at his eyes, which are almost criminally green and searching for something in the crowd. There is joviality even in the way he stands still, his hands at his belt loops and his feet rocking to and fro absently. He never was one to contain the energy he was given, you recall, from a place in your head that surprises you. He always liked to be doing something.

Whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t find it. He taps an Alternian on the shoulder and asks them (in a voice you don’t hear, but know so intimately you may as well) a question, to which they huff, roll their eyes, and extend a long, clawed finger towards the platform you inhabit. He follows their gesture and stops, breathing what you can only assume is a light chuckle before grinning right at you, wide and warm, like he’d never been away.

You rise from your throne and step off of the podium, into the shadows. 

\-----

They fold around you neatly, light and trailing over your bare arms and flushed cheeks. The cold numbs your fingers. You wait until it’s unbearable and then wait some more, counting to twenty and releasing a breath into the dark. It lets you go when you push, dropping you delicately into a patch of tulips on the cusp of your courtyard. There are two thickets of flowers crushed by your frequent landings. The shadows are sticklers for routine. 

The air tastes of salt and smoke. Far below, through the blackness, white-tipped waves beat against the cliff’s face. You fall into step with the sound, making your way over to a low stone wall and sitting heavily upon it, eyes to the sea. 

‘By Jove, Strider, you're a difficult fellow to follow!’

Your spine stiffens. It’s impossible that you thought the way to your courtyard - the real way, through a tricky hallway and a dark, airy arch - could ever be lost on an adventurer. Even so, you can't help but feel somewhat cheated. He shouldn't have come after you, no matter how much you wanted him to. 

‘I wasn't trying to be followed. What are you doing here, Prospitan?’

He falters behind you. You don't see it as much as you feel it: his heart gives pause and his feet diligently follow. You can't help but laugh. Even after all these years, his mind hasn't taken the reins. 

‘Wasn't I invited?’

Certainly not by you. Your brow furrows. The realisation hits you like a stray arrow. ‘Dave.’

‘Jake. Surely you haven't forgotten, dear boy.’

Something about him is so distant. You resent that he's here but still gone. ‘Our youngest. He was knighted the week before you left. Very frustrated that your disappearance somewhat stole his thunder.’

Jake becomes bashful, wringing his hands. You imagine they're scarred. Strong. Capable. ‘Yes, well. Some things can't be helped. I'll doff my cap to the chap when I see him next.’

‘He's inside.’ Your voice is snide and short. 

‘Oh.’ That keeps him quiet for a moment. ‘I didn't really have a gander before coming to find you. Do you still grow the tulips here?’

‘Why did you come?’ 

Your chin rests just shy of your shoulder, jaw clenched tight and bared towards him. Telling yourself that you had forgotten about the bastard heir of Prospit only worked so long as he wasn't in the flesh to prove you wrong. He takes a step backwards, like a scolded barkbeast. 

‘Like I said, I was invited.’

‘Why did you accept the invitation? And show up late, no less?’

This clearly isn't going how he imagined it would go on the horse ride to your gates. You see the script he’d penned set alight in his eyes. 

‘I wanted to- you're being crowned tonight,’ he tells you, as if you don't know. As if you haven't spent four nights awake, heart the apple in the mouth of a hog, sick and sallow in your bed. As if you were the one belly-deep in the jungle, out of reach and yet so stubbornly not out of mind. ‘I wanted to be there for you.’

‘I can look after myself.’

‘No one was saying you couldn't, chum.’

You turn to stare at him for a long moment, no longer blinded by his golden glow. It's dim in the dusk, flickering over his shoulders and between each finger like he's an oil lamp simmering out. 

‘I wrote to you,’ you say, voice carefully empty. If he notices, it doesn't show. ‘Lost three carriers to the wilds because I was too stubborn and stupid to stop sending you letters.’

He comes over, careful and yet still clunky in his mud-caked riding boots. Despite yourself, a fluttering kind of amusement dances in your chest. ‘I never got any letters,’ he says. ‘Didn't come across any by happenstance on my treks, either. If I did, I would have tried to send you something back.’

‘Look what try did,’ you say. ‘Look where intent got us.’

‘You know I didn't go wanting to cause a tizzy. I didn't want you to worry.’

‘We'd thought you dead.’ You've seen many a cadaver enchanted to wear his face and yet nothing is as difficult as meeting his eyes, full of life as they are. They sear. You burn. ‘They sent us bodies as often as they found them and we had to check every one. Prospit wouldn't see to them.’

Jake's expression sort of crumples in the middle, like a piece of parchment you'd crushed in your fist. He looks out to sea, too, towards the slab of Prospit on the horizon. In the setting sun, the distant fog is broken and watery. The place looks like an oasis. ‘No. I can't imagine they would. Janey is a stubborn girl when she wants to be.’

You neglect to mention that you nor your eldest sister have spoken to Jane in months. ‘She’s here, too.’

‘I know,’ he says, simply, and sits down by your side, both too close and too far away. The shadows below darken, a blanket over the waves. Neither of you talk for some time. It's inexplicable, this thing you're both trying to wrestle with. 

‘Listen, I-’

‘Why did you-?’

Your voices clash horribly as you both move to speak. You wince, and he fans his fingers in invitation. 

The breath you take steels you somewhat. ‘Why did you go?’

He doesn’t want to answer that. You know it twists in his chest, a reluctance that he feels is weakness. Hesitation never played nice with him. ‘Why would I stay?’

You say nothing. He can’t meet your eyes.

‘I held no power - I didn’t bloody well want to! They aren’t half tight with all their rules and traditions and all that malarkey once you get properly officiated, you should hear the way they go on - and it was always so stuffy, what with Janey being stuck in classes and John working with the wind. Jade and me had bum all to do all day. She said she was going, and I couldn’t stay without her.’

It would be unfair to hold this against him. You know that. Prospit puts forward an image that wavers when the light dims, and Jake had fallen victim to its gilded nature time and time again. It isn’t his fault. 

‘I always liked exploring,’ he says, like you could’ve forgotten. Things you know about him keep surfacing from some pool of oil in your head, slick and gleaming. ‘But it gets just a smidge deadlier when you get older.’

‘I bet you’re shitty at staying out of trouble,’ you hear yourself mutter. It’s not as harsh as you thought it might’ve been. His surprise flickers in your own head, somewhere behind your eyes. His heart has always been far too open. You roll your eyes fondly. ‘Starting it where there isn’t any.’

‘Hey!’ He gives you an indignant little nudge, which you roll with, snickering. ‘I’m not some cad wandering around starting skirmishes all over the shop! I just… tend to stick my feet into my mouth.’

‘You’d think you’d get tired of the taste, after all this time.’

‘You’re a right bully, Strider!’

He turns toward you when you do toward him, petulant in the face of your challenging little grin. You’re close enough to feel the heat in his exhale, see the flakes of gold buried in the emerald of his eyes. He has a new thatch of freckles over his nose, no doubt coaxed out by the sun. You wonder if he’s finding inconsistencies in your own visage. You wonder if he’s trying to memorise you, too.

‘Are you going to stay?’ You ask. You don’t mean to sound so conspiratory, but you can’t help it; he’s just so close, and it’s dark, and you want an answer.

He breaks your gaze, but doesn’t move. You don’t check where he’s looking. You can’t. Not before he tells you. ‘I think you know I can’t, dear boy.’

You nod. That’s all it takes. When you stand, you breach the edge of a thin golden bubble. It pops in a small shower of sparks about your shoulders and makes you start, eyebrows knitted across your forehead. 

Jake opens his mouth to say something. Instead, you hear Hal, impatient and frustrated. 

‘If you would be so kind, my lord, the people of Derse are ready for you.’

\-----

You stand with a straight back and stiff neck as your father’s will is read by the Dersite to your left. He’s more metal than man, imposing in a way that suggests he’s less there for your protection and more to keep you still. Your knuckles are white on the hilt of your ceremonial sword, but the grip keeps the shake out of your hands. 

The late King Strider had taken every care to make his last testament a pain to work through - it’s hard to stifle every snort, every chuckle, especially when you catch Dave’s eye. He’s kneeling, proud, at the foot of the podium they’ve stood you on, shoulders trembling every so often. Tradition says that he keeps his head bowed until the end of the ceremony, but he’s always been able to tell when you need him and glances upward, smirk effortlessly contagious. The moment is small, but it tides you over until reading is over.

In it, the late king banishes the eldest of your brothers, and for good reason. He labels you as the level-headed heir, the one that shall take over in place of the wild and unpredictable first son. The reporters in the audience murmur and squawk amongst themselves, delighted that they have something to speculate on. You pay them no heed - Hal has your full attention as he approaches with a small ornate box, fastened with a jewelled lock. You swallow thickly, discreetly.

‘Dirk Strider, student of Heart, it is tradition that you are to release your power to the stronghold of Derse. To maintain the integrity of our kingdom, our royalty willingly hand over their chosen mastery.’ You see him smile, a slippery little thing. The formalities were always his favourite part, as excruciating as you found them. ‘Will you be truly fair to your people? Are you prepared to hand over the power with which you were born in order to inherit a new kind of control?’

It should be a small comfort to know he’s as theatrical as ever, but it only serves to make your skin prickle. He relishes in the thin sheen of sweat on your brow, visible only to him in his proximity. You look past him, into the crowd. You look past him to find gold in the sea of black.

‘Yes.’

The process is quick, at least - you hold your mouth open as an old Seer of Heart runs their hand over your throat, mumbling an incantation you recognise but dread to name. Something, eventually, dislodges behind your ribs. You gasp against the sensation, quietly, subtly. Derse is a kingdom of strength. You know a thing or two about standing tall when your knees are weak. 

It burns as it moves, leaves disastrous cold and sickening emptiness in its wake. When it reaches your throat, you feel as if you’re barely conscious. The shadows, so usually your allies, press in behind your eyes, insistent and curious. Heat passes your jugular, painful, aching. You’d sooner bite your tongue off before you let this ball of fire raze across it, but it happens all the same.

Your eyes stay clenched shut for a long second. You don’t plan on opening them, but there’s a throaty gasp in the otherwise silent audience. You don’t have to look for him to know he’s furious, blunt nails digging into the heels of his palms. You want to tell him to calm down, that the pink smoke they’re pulling from you and tucking away is only a fragment of a whole, but your mouth hurts so badly, feels so heavy. 

Feeling hollow, you inhale, and kneel to be knighted by your father’s old sword. Its jagged edge catches on your shoulder, frays the fabric of your tunic. You barely notice. The opal-and-bone crown is fitted neatly over your hair as you rise to your feet. 

Your people cheer, raising their glasses and stomping their feet, but a thousand grinning faces in the audience are outshone by one stony expression, tinged with green and gold.


	2. II

‘What the bloody incorrigible fuck did you let them do to you, Strider?’

‘You’ve got no right-’ 

‘Don't you dare take that tone with me, like you're so high and mighty because they stuck that godawful ivory hat on your empty head! I'm furious with you, Dirk, absolutely livid! Look at you!’

You can't look at yourself, as it happens, and for that you're thankful. One of the small mercies the world has allowed you, even if the price you're paying is the fact that you can barely stand up. The highest silver button of your tunic digs into your chin as you rest it on your chest and try valiantly to stop feeling so sickly. Judging by Jake’s appalled expression, you look just as bad as you're suspecting, if not worse. 

When your father had given up his mastery of Time, you had been a child. The memory was once sharp and clear, but when you search for it now you find it blurred around the edges, out of focus when you try to recall his face. Perhaps he retired to his chambers as soon as he could, too. You don't remember. Everything outside of combat classes and tomes from the library had been rather novel to you, then, and you were too busy relishing the party and the attention to notice. 

They had asked the two young princes to tread the stage and cross swords, a display of strength and a moment of entertainment. Dave looked nervous when he met your eyes, and so you had politely declined. You dread to think of him now, out there alone. It is almost enough to make you return to your party and clear the ballroom hours early. It feels unfair, to have him face them down without you. Maybe the late High King had felt the same, sick at the thought of leaving his sons to the hungry eyes of the Dersites outside. You do not know. He had not come to get you.

You do know that he did not protest. You know he did not weep - and so neither do you. 

Jake has begun to pace across the lush burgundy carpet of your study, hands clasped in a tight ball at the small of his back. Dazed, you watch the way his fingers press against each other affect the skin below his nails. You haven't seen him this upset in years. 

A small bubble of irritation floats lazily up your spine and bursts at the nape of your neck. You haven't seen him in years. 

‘You aren't allowed back here,’ you croak, and you sound so pathetic that you wish you'd never said anything at all. Your throat still burns where the ball of fire had raked across it. ‘This is the king's quarters.’

Jake either doesn't notice or doesn't care how weary you are. He's been pressing his mouth closed since his first outburst, but he isn't able to contain the second one. 

‘Oh, to hell with the blasted king, Dirk! They pulled your heart out through your throat!’

You blink, taken aback in the dim lamplight. ‘No they didn't.’ Your area of expertise had been closely tied to the Heart and Soul, but the organ itself is still very much in place. You find yourself pressing the shaking pads of your fingers against your shirt all the same, feeling for the steady beat of the thing. It's there, reassuring, but erratic. 

His expression twists in a way that only riles you up further. ‘I watched them do it! You agreed to hand over your magic, just like that, because - what, because they asked you nicely? And now here you sit, sunken and hurt and heartless-’

Surprise flickers across his face when you stand, quicker than he can follow with his eyes. Your spine is straight, jaw set, teeth gritted. When you speak, the shadows in the room twist and writhe to your tune. ‘Well, who would know better than you, I suppose.’ Your voice is quiet, which is perhaps worse than if you’d raised it. You realise with a small chill that you want, very much, to hurt him, because he has hurt you. He has driven a thorn between your ribs and twisted it in a way that no one else ever had the power to. 

Jake hesitates. It’s new and infuriating to see him do so. You want to ask him what he came across on his travels that made him so wary, why his eyes dart to every doorway instead of coming to rest on you. You want to ask him what he found out about himself, because it looks like it’s unsettled him so severely that he can hardly stand to be indoors for a second longer. 

‘Dirk,’ he says, and it feels patronising. Maybe that’s just you, how you were mostly left to your own devices until your father died and now no one will leave you alone, no one will trust that you know what you’re doing, but you grit your teeth at the tone in his voice, already defensive. 

The pain begins to ebb. In its wake is a hollow sort of ache, dull in your chest. You will live, but something is gone.

‘What were you expecting, Jake? That they let me keep it?’ The very idea is ridiculous. Most, if not all of Derse’s monarchs were, at a time, sorcerers, students of an Art. All gave it up for the throne. ‘That they let me rely on a crutch to solve the problems of my people? You’ve heard the stories, same as I have. You know exactly what I would have become.”

You’d chosen Heart on your sixteenth birthday because of the stories, not in spite of them. You were a foolhardy, arrogant young boy -- some would say you still are -- full of the belief that you would be the one to tame the Sign of the Ego, to be the one success story in the midst of all the tales of destruction and devastation. The irony was lost on you, back then. Now may be the first time you’ve admitted aloud that you don’t think you could have managed to resist temptation. 

It registers on his face. You can’t describe the look he gives you - sunken and squashed and full of disbelief. For a second, you don’t react, and then the fact that he thinks you are lying hits you like a blow to the head and you seethe. Your expression does not shift, but in your eyes, you are livid. 

Traitor’s eyes, people would whisper when they talked about you. Eyes of a man not truly Derse-born. Eyes that belonged to a Prospitan. 

You had always ignored them. The colour of your eyes had meant nothing to you -- there were theories that they were the result of a Strider gene, commonly found in the males of your family. They were not dark like Derse, and so people had taken issue. Derse has always been an oppressive kingdom. It fears that which it does not understand and so feels the need to eschew it with malicious talk and a firm hand. 

You had never felt betrayed by your eyes, is the point you always try to make. It was a ridiculous concept, that your own body could go against you in such a way. Here, looking at Jake, who looks crushingly disappointed, you think you understand. Here, your traitor’s eyes are the only thing giving you away.

‘I think you should leave,’ you say. You’re good at it, you do not say. You think he hears you anyway. 

‘You don’t mean that.’ It doesn’t sound like a question, but it feels like one. You wonder if he knows how much you care for him. Not for the first time, you wonder if he’d ever use it against you. 

‘What I mean doesn’t matter.’ You sit again, weary and dizzy with pain. The exhale that slips out of your mouth is broken and quick. You look away, unwilling to see Jake’s brow contort with concern. 

He’s quiet for a long moment. You hear him shifting his weight in his heavy riding boots. Were you in any fit state to bemoan the rug beneath them, you would. He’d probably laugh at you but take them off all the same. They could dry by the log fire built into the far wall. 

You shake your head to clear it. You’re so tired.

‘I think it matters.’ His voice is strained. Neither of you can look at each other. He’s watching the shadows twist and curl over each other as if something is going to crawl out of them. Something could, if you made enough effort. You have a feeling you don’t need to tell him that. ‘I think what you want and how you feel matters.’

‘What do you know about how I feel?’ It sounds defensive, even to you. ‘What did you ever know?’

He looks beautiful in the firelight. His expression is sad. ‘What did you let me know?’

There isn’t an answer to that. You both wait for the silence to feel less oppressive, breathing in tandem. 

‘Dirk,’ he says, and you can’t stand it. Your teeth grit, fingers digging into the arm of the chair. You preferred it when he was losing his temper. At least that was familiar ground. Arguing, you excel at. It’s this tenderness that has your ribs contract so tight you feel like breathing may have always been impossible and you’re just finding out now. ‘Dirk, I don’t think this is fair.’

‘It isn’t your decision. It was mine, and I made it. There’s nothing you can do.’ To shut him down like this feels wrong. There’s so much you want to say to him but no way to say it that ends in either of you leaving with plans to return. 

‘You could come with me.’

‘What?’

In the standoff that follows, you realise many things, the first of which being that Jake’s impulsivity may well be the end of him. You know better than anyone that the last thing Jake wants is someone to come with him, least of all you. The most startling thing, however, is that you know that, were you maybe a year younger, you would say yes.

‘You could come with me,’ he says again, eyes earnest now they’re turned on you. The sincerity in his expression only makes the truth cut deeper. ‘We could leave. Tonight. You don’t realise how posilutely suffocating these dingy old places are until you leave them, dear boy. I mean it.’

You are in love with him. You are in love with the wild recklessness that he houses in his wringing hands and nervous smiles. You are in love with the way he watched you give up a part of yourself and still have faith that leaving it behind could seal up the hole. Mostly, you are in love with his hard-headed and stubborn belief.

It is a pity that you do not share it, and don’t think you ever could.

‘No,’ you say. 

The room seems to get smaller, pulsing with a malignant and invasive darkness. It makes Jake pull his arms into himself, as though he’s afraid. 

‘No.’ Hearing it from him makes it sound final, somehow. As though your own insistence wasn’t enough. 

You offer no further explanation, though you both know the mantra as though it had been spoken aloud; My life is Derse’s before it is my own.

‘You should go,’ and when you say it this time, it is missing its malicious intent. You are asking him as much as you are telling him. 'Did you have them take your horse to the stables?’

‘Those bloody stables,’ Jake breathes, shaking his head at you. ‘You’ve had them expanded.’

You forget your tension, just like that. His airy laugh, however permeated by sadness, is a balm to the wound in your chest. ‘Of course I did.’ Your voice takes on an affronted edge, but it's easy all the same. This is familiar. ‘I'm still quite the rider.’

Jake’s smile is diluted and discrete, but genuine. ‘I remember. I also remember that one of us knocked out a baby tooth astride one of those great beasts in our youth. Which of us was that, again?’

‘Hm,’ you muse, chin tilting in your charade of thought. ‘As I recall it, one of us dared the other, and therefore the aforementioned loss should be his fault.’ 

He looks away, into the fire, and his expression contorts into a wince. Very suddenly, you remember Prospit’s penchant for burning their dead. 

‘Come on,’ you say, standing on much steadier legs. For a second, you lock eyes, both waiting for the other to move. You tell yourself that your exhaustion may well make it difficult for you to walk as proudly as you'd like. As a result, it only seems logical that you'd require an aide. You offer him your arm, eyebrow cocked expectantly. He reads you well and always has. The weight of his fingers in the crook of your elbow reassures you that you're going to be fine. The stables aren't too far away, regardless. 

‘I’ll write, Dirk,’ he tells you, eyes on the door. As you approach, the shadows slink away. You wonder if they were expecting a meal. ‘I swear it.’

You breathe out of your nose, steady and deliberate. ‘Okay.’ There’s no way to tell him that you don't believe him without creating turbulence anew. 

He opens the door for you, arm extended to keep his grip on your tunic. You try very hard not to ache. 

\-----

His mare is grazing quietly when you deliver him to her, eyes huge and doleful in her face. Your breath catches. 

'She's beautiful,’ you mumble, reaching out a hand to run a finger along her soft nose. She forgoes her meal to nuzzle into your palm, a gift that you certainly do not take for granted. Her nose and chin fade into a light peach, barely there but still noticeable against the stark white of her coat. The soft whipping of her tail sends straws of hay fluttering around her hooves and your feet. 

'Would you believe I found her?’ Jake says, no small amount of pride in his voice. ‘Wandering around the outskirts of Alternia. I figured they weren't going to put her to any kind of pleasant use and picked her up myself! We make quite the team, don't we, sweetheart?’

She whinnies, nudging further against your fingers. You can't help but smile. 

‘She likes you,’ Jake’s voice is little above a murmur. You scratch gently between her ears, refusing to entertain what he's actually trying to say. 

‘Where will you go?’ The horse has no answer for you, though she does meet your gaze. There's intelligence in her eyes. Maybe she knows you aren't talking to her. Jake ruffles her mane and takes his hand away from your elbow at long last. You feel simultaneously lighter and heavier for it. 

‘Who knows. Wherever I think looks interesting. There's a lot of world out there, Strider.’ He fits his saddle over the horse’s back, securing the stirrups instead of looking at you. ‘Perhaps, one day, you would like to see it.’ 

You know he isn't lashing out at you, so you smile for him, only pretend around the edges. ‘Perhaps.’ 

Jake rests a hand on the horse’s neck, turning to face you. You take your eyes away from his mare and look right back, an echo of the playful challenge from the courtyard shimmering there. That hopefulness already feels so far away. So resolute are you to hold his stare that you don't see him leaning in until his mouth is hardly an inch from your own, his eyes hooded but still disarmingly green in the half-light. 

‘I will write,’ he tells you again, ‘and, someday, I will be back.’ 

He sounds so certain. A wisp of gold flickers under your nose. Before you can stop yourself, you inhale deeply, breathe in his determined belief, and close the space to kiss him. It is small, and it is nowhere near satisfying, but it is something. 

‘Okay,’ you say, more certain, this time. 

It seems to satisfy him. His smile is blinding, this close. 

‘Goodbye, Strider,’ he says softly, and you do your best to conceal what a blow he has dealt with two words alone as he mounts his horse. She huffs at you, just as quiet, when she begins her steady trot out of the stable. 

You watch him go, leant heavily against one of the open gates. He looks back only once.

His expression is hard to read, but it only takes you a second to commit it to memory. Anything outside of his cheery, platitudinous grins or overblown and often false confusion is something to be cherished. Jake’s mouth is pursed tightly, eyebrows cinched together across his forehead. He gives one resolute nod, holds up a hand to wave, and urges his mare further into Derse’s cloaking night. 

When you're sure he's out of sight, you hang your head as far back as it will go and breathe out, watching the mist of your exhale dissipate into shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again this one took me MONTHS and im sick of looking at it. comments are ALWAYS appreciated and thank you for coming back for this chapter if you did!! royalty au dirkjake is my labour of love

**Author's Note:**

> i love royalty au!! no this ISNT proofread because i got so sick of working on it that i posted it the SECOND it was done goodbye. full disclosure i've never written jake before in my LIFE and his speech patterns may have killed me off so thanks for that babe x


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